Studio: Neon
Director: Amy Seimetz
Writer: Amy Seimetz
Producer: Amy Seimetz, David Lawson Jr., Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson
Stars: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Josh Lucas, Adam Wingard, Michelle Rodriguez, Olivia Taylor Dudley
Review Score:
Summary:
A cerebral contagion strangely spreads amongst a circle of friends after one woman becomes convinced she will die the next day.
Review:
I’m going to describe “She Dies Tomorrow’s” plotline, though that’s not what the movie is “about.” Save for a few flashbacks, the narrative mostly moves linearly, yet the fiction serves largely as a handrail for drifting blindfolded through a gauzy exploration of philosophical fear. Imagining “She Dies Tomorrow” embodied as a person, it would be a wine-drunk waif, desperate to escape everyday anxiety, spinning slowly with outstretched arms at an outdoor arts festival whose percussive music and flashing lights lag into slow motion due to slightly psychedelic intoxication. Drugs done would definitely be downers, not uppers, by the way. I’ll try clarifying after a quick story summary for context.
Inexplicably overcome with dark thoughts about mortality, Amy becomes convinced she will die tomorrow. Concerned about her wellbeing, Amy’s close confidant Jane assures Amy she’s being irrational. Except Jane stops being certain about Amy’s safety when she finds she can only fixate on the notion that death is inevitable, inescapable, and coming for her the next day too.
Jane’s sudden paranoia propels her to interrupt a get-together at her brother Jason’s place. Jason’s wife Susan already dislikes Jane. Now the weird woman shows up at their house in pajamas worriedly wondering about dying. Susan can’t wait to be rid of her. Yet after Jane leaves, Susan and her guests soon get the sense that they must come to terms with death, because they’ll all be dying tomorrow. Everyone appears to have contracted an unusual disease of the mind, and they can’t control its spread any more than they can avoid death itself.
Writer/director Amy Seimetz has long been a “mumblecore” mainstay. She populates this project with a number of actors who are similarly no strangers to experimenting in spaces specifically designated for arthouse indie drama. True to the term, “She Dies Tomorrow” includes instances of actual mumbling. Characters dip deeply in a communal haze of entranced depression, letting their lips get so lazy that scattered words are sometimes rendered unintelligible.
Most of what gets spoken in the movie, which often remains wordless for long stretches, doesn’t mean anything anyway. Dialogue that doesn’t directly deal with death, such as some dinner party dithering about dolphin sex, evaporates into irrelevant walla. Seimetz presumably designs interactions to be inconsequentially banal, as evidenced by one moment when Amy drops the phone from her ear while we continue to hear Jane blathering blandly at the other end. The cast may even be concocting conversations from a vague outline for ‘ordinary people speak’ so ‘death talk’ stands out in spotlights.
Frames of mind looking for a traditional film figuratively constructed in straightforward sentences, i.e. noun, verb, repeat, will instead be submerged in a miasma of contemplative ennui seemingly squared for middle-aged suburbanites. Example: Early in the movie, Amy wobbles around her home as though dizzy, caressing walls while a classical aria wails in the background and water wells in her eyes. Amy next moves to a prone position to bond with the wood of her floor, rising only to reset the music before taking her sleepwalk outside. This sequence showcases Amy’s somber solitude for five full minutes. Then she loops the music once more and takes to browsing online for cremation urns and leather jackets. Such moments are meant to capture repetitive mundanity as literally as possible, which is not at all conducive to excitement.
“She Dies Tomorrow” attempts to hypnotize through vivid imagery. Classic conceits such as shooting through doorways grab at evoking a voyeur vibe. Purposeful lens flares, abrupt edits, and dazzling displays of Argento colors cut in at random as additional suitors on the technical side’s eclectic dance card. Does every shot always signify something specifically significant? Probably to Seimetz, though those intentions aren’t consistently translated for the audience.
Setting suns, microscopic bubbles, wine pouring into a glass, and keys sitting on a table compose another mob of quizzical close-ups. Amy and Jane are respectively obsessed with wine and scientific cultures, suggesting their fascination with the movement of circular shapes says something about their thought patterns.
Essentially, “She Dies Tomorrow” aims to articulate sympathetic sensations, or to transmit a feeling in film form. Often that feeling tends to be confused aimlessness. Is that the point? Perhaps. But that doesn’t equate to enlightenment, much less entertainment.
Appreciating what Amy Seimetz tries to achieve requires cerebrally synching with the malaise depicted onscreen as well as with its indeterminate metaphors. You have to find the film between the lines, behind verbal exchanges, within each silent stare, and underneath the nuanced tics of each character’s tears and fears. Anyone unable to vicariously attach to “She Dies Tomorrow” runs the risk of putting his/her head in an over out of boredom even though the routine only lasts 85 minutes.
If this kind of existential exploration appeals to you, don’t let the low review score influence you. My downward thumb reflects a personal ambivalence toward the film’s woozy wandering, which deters me from connecting with any theme outside of Jane’s unfounded fear of men murdering someone in their sleep. The movie is an acquired taste to be sure. Should stream of consciousness style fill the bag in your tea, good luck and Godspeed. I think we’ll still be able to agree that “She Dies Tomorrow” is as “not for everybody” as any film can possibly be.
Review Score: 45
While the movie works as an atmosphere-building slow burn, the lack of substance in the story makes “Black Cab” harder to get into as a narrative.